Not buzzfeed

Top 10 Tens in 10 FeedBuzzFeed Twitter Weird

The thing about FeedBuzz is that it extricates concepts from Weird Twitter, but on a macro-scale. Sometimes the scale isn’t macro and is also suited for the smaller canvas of Weird Twitter. Both macro- and micro-articles are suitable for FeedBuzz. This whole thing is a response to the mindless list content popularized by huge dork websites like BuzzFeed. The idea there is that listicles garner more clicks by virtue of being easier to read but that the content is often intellectually vacant or just uninteresting.

That’s not to say that BuzzFeed writers take themselves seriously. No one is saying, “Damn, that article about the 23 most perfect foods in the world is just journalistically brilliant,” and a lot of what BuzzFeed does is bland and harmless and ultimately lucrative. BuzzFeed is more of a meme aggregator–one that consistently draws from known memetic concepts like “FAIL,” and “YOLO.” The appeal is that we all get “FAIL.” FAIL is something bad. FAIL is like when you buy into an internet subculture so holistically that it’s no longer uncommon for you to sincerely and enthusiastically yell “FAIL” when someone expresses a sincere and enthusiastic emotion. LOL

FAIL and LOL and WIN and WTF are ironic expressions at their heart that are often coupled with ironic GIFs and pictures with writing on them. But, on BuzzFeed, there is such a gleeful attachment to these ironic sentiments that it creates a detached reality in which George Takei rules and ruminations about the future presented on image macros are “DEEP.” BuzzFeed is like when you start saying something as a joke, and then it just enters your everyday, unironic vernacular over time. DOPE.

FeedBuzz, by contrast, is a backlash to this false and exuberant irony in that it culls its premise from a Weird Twitter ethos that actively and absurdly seeks to subvert regular Twitter, regular jokes, and regular BuzzFeeds. It is run by a notorious internet duck who appears to accept any non-spam content that roughly fits within the standard FeedBuzz parameters. It is composed of writers and content producers often working under nonsensical pseudonyms who frequently create things that are either great or dumb. (Don’t worry, the dumb example was me). You don’t even have to talk to vrunt or know his real name or even know that he is more than a notorious internet duck. No one really even has to know who you are. (Consider that I was perfectly content thinking of @Mobute as a dead African dictator and not, in fact, a real current human man).

So, what is even the appeal of FeedBuzz for content creators? Are we just trying to get people to laugh? Are we trying to bring in more Twitter followers? Are we just buying into this absurdist internet subculture that is often very similar in framework to the memetic regeneration it’s satirizing? Are we just sad people looking for a big break?

FeedBuzz user, ryandeel, had a similar and more concise aporia, but is this shit even funny? Will this even be published? Will vrunt, a person I don’t know, spurn this article for its self-referential sincerity? Is this even sincere?